Plots and characters in the Old Testament are said to portend what lies in store for the Jewish people. That being so, a bewildering episode in the Book of Numbers foretold the plot against modern Israel: If war could not bring down the nation, try cursing it. .
The compelling intrigue with its twists and turns, its good and bad forebodings, is well known. It begins with the desire of Balak, King of Moab, to stop redeemed slaves in their tracks after unlikely victories over real armies. Military might was not behind the juggernaut Jews. So Balak understood. The power of the start-up nation, he reckons, resided in their leader’s power of speech. Moses was the secret weapon.
And this gave Balak an idea. If by speaking with God Moses could empower the nation, they can surely be disempowered by speech.
So the King contracts with a pagan prophet for hire. A militant curser and master of a talking donkey, Balaam was made for the job. This grandson of Laban, the greatest schemer of them all, Balaam was born to curse. Up to now he has made a good living out of plaguing targeted people to ugly deaths. The Near East was rife with such malign practitioners. Here was a royal commission that would make Balaam immortal.
Balak to him: "I know that whoever you bless is blessed and whoever you curse is cursed." He offers a king’s ransom to the fearsome diviner to bad mouth God’s own people. The end game is not to wipe the wandering multitude off the face of the desert. It is to keep them from going into the Promised Land.
"Let us drive them out," says the king at a meeting with the elders of Moab and Midian. It was not the Jews they feared, but the idea of a sovereign Jewish state. Homeless and stateless, the Jews were not a problem, God’s chosen could keep their difficult laws anywhere they liked; so long as it was not in the land of Israel. The neighboring nations were prepared to live and let live. But God’s own nation in possession of God’s own country would be a different kettle of fish.
Happy with their deities and quaint perversions, pagan peoples feared that a sovereign Israel would remake the world in a fundamentally different way. It was thus imperative that Moses and his multitude be cursed into spiritual oblivion.
Listen, a disturbed gathering says at a far-ahead point in history, at which time the people of Israel are living - and thriving - in the Promised Land. Human Rights delegates by the thousands meet on the side of a game-changing conference at the Indian Ocean city of Durban. The year is 2001, and plots are afoot.
Listen, gabble the plotters; war after war has left Israel not just intact but invulnerable. Why not wage war of a different kind? A war that Israel cannot win. Words will be our weapon. We’ll bring Israel to its knees through the power of negative publicity. We’ll condemn and demonize Zionists to the point where they become a pariah people. We’ll unite the nations of the world in a common hatred.
It was an intoxicating vision, and many entities and people bristling with pent-up scores to settle were intoxicated by it. What could be simpler than picking on the worst international crimes in the book and laying them at Israel’s door!
Apartheid came to mind. Who wouldn’t hate a country accused of Apartheid! Ethnic cleansing, war crimes and occupation came a close second, third and fourth.
It was a prospect to make plotters drool. Add some imaginative marketing and PR; draw on deep pockets to grease the wheels, and in no time the vision became a full-blown international campaign. Before Israel knew it the court of public opinion was onto its case. From there it was all downhill. Set an impossibly high legal and moral bar to clear, Israel was coerced into fighting terrorism with kid gloves.
And another ‘plus’ for the mischief-makers: it cost Jewish lives. ‘Be not over righteous, nor too clever,’ warns Ecclesiastes 7:16. And Shimon b. Lakish adds: ‘Whoever shows mercy to the cruel will ultimately be cruel to those deserving of mercy.’ Israeli leaders would do well to heed such truths in the prolonged Gaza war that has claimed hundreds of Israel’s youth.
Zionist brutality, Zionist oppression, Zionist occupation; Zionist Nazi: the cursing is enough to make Diaspora Jewry duck and dive like criminals. The cursers are trained to avoid the ‘Jew’ word. Curse the Zionists all you like, but don’t call them Jews. Protect our prime asset, the human rights halo. Remember our halo, and keep it bright. So warn the script writers. Brandish the halo and we shall curse Israel out of existence.
The club of cursers is led by the Big Five: Amnesty, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch; Christian Aid, and the UN Human Rights Council. Nominally the entities are humanitarian, not-for-profit and apolitical. In reality they are none of those things. There are hundreds of second-tier bad-mouthers of Israel, a bewildering number in tiny Israel. Entities such as B’Tselem, ‘Committee Against House Demolitions’, Jewish Voices for Peace’ and many others compete fiercely to bad mouth Israel.
With publicity comes money. The bottom line is what the human rights business amounts to.
There is a load of free cash for anyone with a bad word to say about Israel. George Soros foundations coughs up hundreds of millions. The European Union is a veritable golden goose. Trade is brisk, the money big and the players earnest. For the human rights activist, Israeli crimes are the goose that lays the golden egg.
Thus war by other means was born in Durban. And on its heels tumbled the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The strategy is to paralyze Israel to the point where it stands alone and vulnerable among the nations, a meek prey for waiting wolves. Negative people (alert to the smallest fault); arrogant people (presuming to know better than Palestinian Arabs what’s good for them); greedy and lazy people (easy money for easy work) are the progeny of Balaam the patriarchal curser.
Will they meet the fate of the wily wizard? ‘When the Almighty told Balaam to hold his tongue he disobeyed. Feted celebrity-hood beckoned like a pot of gold. Malignity personified, he ransacked his whole bag of tricks. But the Almighty had other plans for Balaam. Stymied, he rode from pillar to post. Immortal he’d be, though for reasons he did not reckon with.
At the moment of truth wrong words tripped off the would-be curser’s tongue, mouth organ of militant curses, gadget of fortune and misfortune, master of talking donkey. Born to curse, Balaam uttered the most sublime blessings in human annals, and would have departed this life with the hurt rioting and rotting in his head.
How beautiful are your tents, oh Jacob, your dwelling places, oh Israel!
For the tribute recited in synagogues to this day thank a pagan prophet for hire. Odder yet, thank a lifetime antagonist of the Jews. Oddest of all, thank the greatest curser who ever lived.
Steve Apfel is a diversity freak. Economist. Former director and founder of the School of Management Accounting. Veteran authority on anti-Zionism. Activist against antisemitism. Prodigious author. He has penned more out of the box works on antisemitism than most.
He blogs at https://substack.com/@steveapfel1
